The present disclosure relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing system, and an information processing method for processing an image used for a virtual microscope in a technological field of a virtual microscope used mainly in the field of medicine, pathology, or the like.
In the field of medicine, pathology, or the like, there has been proposed a virtual microscope system that digitizes images of cells, tissues, organs, or the like of a living body which are obtained by an optical microscope and allows a user such as a doctor and a pathologist to examine the tissues or the like or diagnose a patient on the basis of the digital images. The virtual microscope is capable of virtually scaling an image up and down on a computer to display the image on a display unit at a request of a user.
In a method of creating a virtual microscope slide disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-53701, a computer-controlled microscope is used to take a plurality of low-magnification images of a sample, fragmentize those images, and restructure the images. As a result, a macro image of the sample is created. The purpose of the creation of such a macro image is to enable a user to view the entire sample at a time and select a significant part on the image by using the entire image of the sample (see, paragraph 0042 of the specification of Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-53701, for example).
Further, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2011-117991, a sample held on a glass slide is read by a scanner, thereby generating images of the sample at a plurality of different magnifications (resolutions) for one sample. Furthermore, out of the images of the sample, images at predetermined low magnifications can be set as thumbnail images. The list of the thumbnail images is displayed as a screen of a thumbnail list view, and the thumbnail images are used to access real data (original image scanned) of the sample image (see, for example, paragraphs 0045 and 0052, FIG. 4, and the like of Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2011-117991).